23 Musings

Really interesting post here from MADComments which I'll quote from below:

'So was Facebook’s primary reason for existence to gather information from its users in a ‘fun’ environment that everyone can benefit from?

According to internet conspiracy theories, Facebook’s investors all appear to have links to In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency, BBN Technologies, a research and development firm known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what is popularly known as the internet as well as the US Department of Defense.

Most disturbingly it has strong links with the Information Awareness Office (IAO), which is an organisation set up to gather information about everyone in a centralised location including internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.

So is Facebook really a service that allows us to keep in contact with friends, reunite with long lost pals and find out the truth about our Saturday night dates, or is it the best planned modern marketing and data capture tool that ever existed?'

Scary stuff indeed! I just blogged about the possibilities of an ad serving company using Facebook to gain reams of demographic and behavioural data on users but this would be something altogether more sinister.

Far fetched in my opinion, but you can guarantee that the organisations mentioned in the excerpt above would have a vested interest in accessing the data on Facebook users!